Devices such as personal digital assistants (PDA) or palm-sized personal computers (P/PC) are fast becoming popular for keeping track of appointments and a list of to-do tasks (“to-dos”) in our modern world. The applications on these devices support capturing of these appointments and tasks. These applications also provide a reminder feature for alerting a user of an upcoming appointment, event or task. The reminder feature usually causes a visual as well as an audio alert to be generated on the device. A light indicator that is strategically located on the device provides the visual alert. The visual and audio alerts can be generated periodically until a user has acknowledged the reminder. The user acknowledges the reminder by pressing a button on the device or by tapping on a touch-screen display. Such a method of acknowledging a reminder is sometimes cumbersome to a user, especially so when the device is stored away. It is therefore desirable to provide the user with a notification switch that is accessible from the outside of the device which the user can simply activate to acknowledge a reminder.
As these devices are usually small and easily stored in a shirt pocket, this notification switch should preferably be located on an accessible side of the device when the device is stored in the shirt pocket. This side of the device is usually a back wall of the device due to other design constraints. However, if located on such a back wall of the device, this notification switch will be hidden from view and difficult to access when the device is in use. A second notification switch can be introduced on the device but space being a major constraint on such a device does not always permit such an option.
From the foregoing, the prior art therefore has a need for an actuator of a notification switch that can be actuated from two orthogonal directions. This switch should preferably fit into a personal digital assistant without taking up too much valuable space.